***Snowflake Bentley

by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

Illustrated by Mary Azarian

Reviewed September 15, 2003.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1998. 32 pages.
Winner of the 1999 Caldecott Medal.
Available for $11.20 in hardcover on Amazon.com.
Available at Sembach Library (JB BEN).

This is a beautiful, quiet book about Wilson A. Bentley. He saw
beauty in snowflakes, when other people in Vermont simply thought them as
common as dirt. He didn’t care about money, but invested his own money
in photographing snowflakes in all their variety. He saw his pictures
of snowflakes and other beauties of nature as his gift to the world.

The author closes with a quote from Wilson Bentley: “Because I do
this I can show these lovely things to people who never would have seen
them without my help. They will get their daily quart of milk, all
right. Other farmers will attend to that. But I think I am giving
them something which is just as important.”